


Care For The Bones

by F_S



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Dogs, Gen, Lady (Direwolf) - Freeform, Warging, mentions of animal abuse, rape recover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 21:38:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18786721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/F_S/pseuds/F_S
Summary: Technically, she’s the last surviving Bolton. She stands to inherit everything - the Dreadfort and every scrap of Bolton land between the Last River and Sheepshead Hill - even Ramsey’s precious dogs. The hound master wants them slaughtered. Much to the fright of the men, Sansa decides to tame them.





	Care For The Bones

 

She never saw him as a brother. Not even as a half-brother. He was the one she knew least. This older ward, occupying the same regard that she gave Theon. Indifference. Yet here they are. Likely the last scrap of family she has left. Her pack. The Lady of Winterfell, and the King of the North. It was a powerful pack, but a small one. Hardly a pack at all. A pair. One whose ties could crumble at the slightest touch.

She never saw him as a brother. Didn’t even know him. And now he was the ‘King of the North’. Would he take Winterfell from her? It was all she had left. She would protect it like the dire wolf Lady should have grown into.

The last time she saw him, she was a stupid girl off to the capital. She didn’t even say goodbye to him, she remembers. He was off to the wall with Uncle Benjin and she didn’t even spare him a goodbye. Not even a glance.

A lot has happened since then.  A lot has happened to her, and she’s heard stories of Jon. A steward, a fighter, a young commander. Now an army leader, now ‘King of the North’, now his army holds Winterfell.

On paper he sounds power hungry, and on paper is how Sansa knows her half-brother.

He will slowly start to pry power from her. She’s just a girl after all. A widower twice over. One day she’ll wake up as a powerless ward and he will be Lord of Winterfell. Mother always said this might happen – that he would poke and poke and poke for the slightest way into power. He will take everything.

She’ll be a glorified prisoner again – which is every high born ladies situation, she supposes. He’ll marry her off for some big alliance and that will be that. Separated from her home again, in the bed of a stranger again. And this time she won’t be so lucky as to be smuggled moon tea by the loyal servants.

Where would he sell her? Likely to Lord Baelish. He’s made it pretty clear the Knights of the Vale are here for Sansa, as is he and his coin. It’s best she gets used to looking at his face, then. Maybe she could convince Jon to delay – maybe she could spin some tactic about promising her after the war. Cause if she married Lord Baelish now, he might just withdraw and barricade the Eyrie up until spring came. That sounded like something he would do.

Sansa yanked her gloves off and continued her descend down the stone steps, fixing them tightly in a pocket of her dress. The battle was five days ago. Winter came three days ago. The proclaiming of _Jon Snow_ as ‘King’ was two days ago. Yesterday a great white dire wolf showed up in the castle yards, making Sansa gasp with longing when she first caught sight of it.

 _Lady._ But she was being stupid. It was not her beloved pup. Lady was long gone. Taken by the Lannisters. Fool.

 _I had blamed Arya back then._ _Fool_.

She remembers cradling the puppy to her chest. Remembers fixing bottles of milk and carefully mashing up her first meat. Remembers sitting by the fire for hours brushing her fur with her own hair brushes. Mother had been furious with her at that.  _‘These combs are meant for a lady not a dog’_. That was when Sansa decided on a name. Gods she had been an unbearable girl, hadn’t she? It was the first death she suffered in all her life. A baby she had raised, killed while she sat their trusting and meek.

A death thrown into the bottom of her mind and left untouched for so long. Because next came Father and Arya, Bran and Rickon, Robb and Mother.

The last time she ever saw the wolves was Lady’s body the morning after the Lannisters had her executed. Father had quietly taken her aside, the two of them standing in the stillness of the forest edge. He told her that Lady was just an animal. Something that should have died as a pup helpless beside its mother’s lifeless body. Sansa had given her a good life. And perhaps it was for the best? Lady would have suffered in the capital, and been killed before too long by nervous soldiers or desperate pelt poachers.

Then he asked her if she wanted to keep the fur. It was a morbid and horrible thing to say at first, that was her friend, her protector, her kin they planned to rip the skin off. But Father had talked to her gently.

She had kept it down the bottom of her truck of possessions, wrapped within the silk of a dress too small for her anymore. It became both the most precious and most distressing item she owned. When things grew bad in the Keep, when she was orphaned, she would hold Lady to her under the covers and muffle her crying with it. Winter was coming for them, she would pray.

She doesn't pray in the Septs or the Godswoods anymore.

When Ser Dantos the drunken knight had told her the plans to spirit her away in the excitement of the King’s wedding, she had fixed the pelt and a small clothe bag that contained all her wordly possessions under the volumous southeron dress she wore.

Lady was still in the Vale. Tucked once more inside a chest full of Alayne Stone’s dark dresses. Hopefully untouched. Because Baelish had sprung the Bolton marriage on her mid trip, there was no time to go back and fetch the fur. It was nice to think of returning Lady to the North, rejoining the fur with her bones which lay to rest in the crypts. But some part of her was happy Lady stayed in the Vale. Hidden and safe from the Boltons and their slimy, disgusting, traitorous fingers.

When she saw the white dire wolf, her heart sung for Lady. To finally take the pelt from the bottom of chests and lay it across her bed covers. For Lady to finally see light once more.

Sansa came to the bottom of the steps with a huff of slightly laboured breathing. The kitchens were busy with a mix of Bolton servants and Winterfell residents that managed to keep alive through the years. It was not enough. As Lady of the Castle, _Lady of Winterfell,_ her duties were to keep the domestic duties running flawlessly. All her childhood lessons had centred around this, learning how her home worked. Learning how to run her inevitable husband’s keep.

The houses will bring hundreds of soldiers in their ride to bend the knee to this new ‘king’, and they won’t bring a single cook or washer woman or smithy between them. At one point she meant to ask Jon about requesting such people, but the words had died in her throat. How did a Lady ask a King for peasants to scrub the floors when war raged about the Seven Kingdoms. It felt hideously foolish as it came to the tip of her tongue so she never let it past her lips.

Besides, was this even her castle to run? Or was this his grace’s responsibility now? Jon gave her no orders. Infact, they had spoken only once since the bannerman in the hall had declared him King.

“What do you make of it, Lady Sansa?”

“As long as King Jon prepares us for winter just as Jon Snow would have, I am happy.”

That night Jon had looked at her with those sad eyes, and she saw a glimpse of family there, but it felt the more time they spent together the uneasier he became in her presence.

Perhaps he was realising she was not a lady anymore, but a Stark, and Jon was always so naturally uneasy around Starks.

They sat nursing their cups, waiting for the other to speak for far too long in the fire light.

All she wanted to do was reclaim her castle. Save her home. Save the one piece of family she could save.

Winterfell bore scars just like them.

She ripped the Boltons from these rooms and burned them at the stake, hoping that turning them into nothing but ash and smoke would cleanse the stones of Winterfell.

Later that same night, so late in fact it was likely morning, she went down to the kennels to see if Ramsey had been eaten yet.

He was not. The worm had been in there for hours, yet the dogs cowered in the furthest corners of their opened cages.

Winter was coming, and the dogs could not waste the meat a useless man provided.

And in the winter, she had to be brave enough to meet Ramsey one last time. To be a strong Lady of Winterfell. A Stark. The Stark who burned the Red Kings to the ground.

She would see the Dreadfort torn down, stone after stone. But that could wait until spring.

Ramsey was right. Those dogs would never hurt him. They were like Theon. Cut apart and put back together into what Ramsey wanted them to be. Those dogs would rather starve then attack him. Knowing Ramsey he would have plucked the largest of the pups and made them watch as he drowned their litter mates in front of them.

The hounds would never harm him.

Maybe it was Lady’s ghost. Maybe it was the Kings of Winter guiding her. Maybe it was Robb and Father and Arya, their wills living through the dogs. But she willed them to pull him apart and they did. She willed the black one to rip his face apart but leave him alive, and it happened. She willed them to savage his manhood off, and they did. Then she asked them, to tear his skin off piece by piece, leaving him to bleed out and die like flayed men did. A perfect calm filled her at the sight, mixing with the blood and the wine that warmed inside her.

Then she walked away, and smiled at his screams, because she knew it would be done. She had gone up to her bed, a spare room filled with only a bed and fireplace, and slept the most peaceful night she ever had since Father died.

Sun streaming through the frosted windows woke her up just before lunch. There were no servants to rouse the sleeping and call them to breakfast, there was no one to come in and stoke the fire. No one to cut fire wood, in fact.

The first thing she did was walk across the chilly room to the large basket containing her folded clothing. It was filled with the northern dresses Roose’s wife had given her, (never Ramsey or Roose – they couldn’t care less, but that simple, kind, Frey woman).

The dresses from the late Frey were well-made and warm and sat alongside the five Lord Bealish had gifted her the night before her wedding in the Godswood. Also inside were the few outfits she had with her on the journey about the Vale, and finally a bundle of dresses the Winterfell washer women had scavenged for her.

Some of the scavenged clothing was practical, passed on from some soldier’s or well-off farmer’s wife.

One she recognised as her Lady Mother’s. She remembers it vaguely, remember the way the cloth felt and smelt under her small hands when she clung to her mother’s skirts.

She knelt and sorted through the basket, seeking the perfect outfit. No more did she need to dress like a beautiful southern lady, her appearance maliciously calculated to be elegant yet bland as she floated along knife edge after knife edge. No more would she dress like Alayne Stone. Today she stood Lady Sansa Stark of Wintefell - Warden of the North, though that was now in question - salvager of the Battle for Winterfell, killer of Ramsey Bolton and dog whisperer it seemed.

Today she would dress for a day full of walking around a castle, hassling men, seeing her orders followed, fixing, mending, healing the North.

She pulled grey woolen tights on and eased a warm white undergown over her head. Its sleeves were long, neckline as high as it could go, but only fell to just below the knees. After that was long socks knitted from rabbit fur, and brown boots made from soft leather that laced all the way up her calf. They were lined with undyed wool, all cream and grey, and the soles were hard wood, that clicked against the stone floor as she moved from chest to mirror and back again.

Corsets reminded her of her time in the south, and since there was no servants to string her in, Sansa forgo it. To make up for the lack of hold on her breasts, she chose a midlayer shift of stallion black that had a row of laces at the front of the chest. Binding herself in snug and comfortable, she then picked out a practical blue skirt short enough to not drag in the mud. Indeed, it was almost unladylike with its shortless, mid-calf like her white undergown. Her midlayer of black was longer by a hand, like a frill to her blue layer. She then pulled on a matching blue doublet, one of the thickest pieces of clothing she owned. On it was stitched little moons, all at different phases. It was a gift from Baelish, the same blue as house Arryn with their coat of arms symbol of the moon gracefully entwined. No doubt he probably had something similar with falcons throughout.

 _That man is unreadable except when it comes to me_. Men. Weak and tender like foals when confronted with a woman they desired. Cersei had told her that once, in her own drunken way. Even Margrey and Lady Tyrell in secret smirks across the luncheon table. _I am a piece of cake dangling just out of reach. Being thrown silk, rubies and most importantly, soldiers, in an attempt to have me. How long until he finally gets the cake? How long until he realises that perfect looking cake is in fact a mess underneath her frosting, full of lemon rind and chicken bones._

If Sansa was good at anything, it was frosting. She reapplied it every day before her mirror in Kings Landing and adjusted it in the Vale to suit her new chef.

She would wear the thick moon doublet without a qualm. It was warmer and a damn lot softer than most of what she had. The next item of clothing would nearly hide the fine doublet, and was so dear to her it cancelled out all other misgivings of the outfit. It was a shawl of elk fur taken from her mother’s wardrobe. It went over her shoulders and fastened in two twin buttons, strong and large, made of the great elk’s bones, finely engraved. One displayed the outline of what the majestic female once looked like, ears up and alert, while the other showed the mountains of the Wolfswood.

The elk fur was bronze and red, a sister shade to her hair, the two coppers bouncing off each other and enhancing one another’s beauty as they mingled and bled into one another. It hung near all the way to her hips and all the way up to her neck, snugly fitted there almost like a scarf. Yet no matter how big this shawl looked wrapped around her, she knew for a fact Father once owned a similar piece made from the same elk.

_One of the biggest beasts I ever seen, my lord, the Lady of the Woods we called her. Ever year she would have a new pair of twins by her side. Her sons became magnificent stags. We never hunted her out of respect, and for want of more great stags for the hunting, but last month our hounds found her with broken legs down the bottom of a gully. Ended her quickly you know. I had my servants fashion shawls for your-self and lady wife, so that the Lady of the Woods could live on. Grant your lady-wife magnificent sons, eh?_

She had forgotten the Lord that presented the gifts. A house of proud hunters who ruled a part of the Wolfswood, no doubt. Sansa’s fingers lingered on the buttons, the size of lemons yet invisible among the thick fur that fanned around them.

Last was a belt, a beautiful pattern of intertwined flax, pinning her doublet down and buckling with a simple steel clasp. It allowed her to tuck a pouch for pocketing things, and also to sheathe the dagger Brienne had gifted her at the small of her back. The elk shawl hung low enough to hide it. She might not have need of it, or be able to get to it in time if she ever was attacked, but it was there and she had it. Snug and comfortingly - heavy on her belt.

Then, with a fussing of the shawl and correcting it minutely to sit further back on her shoulders, she went off in search of food. She had not eaten at all yesterday except for the cups of wine she shared with Jon.

The weeks she spent as Lady Bolton were equally hungry, only a plate of food brought in by Ramsey himself at night. Some poor attempt at associating his nightly appearances with good things, she supposed. He would place the food on the table by the fire, and only after the grasping and grunting and coming within her like a half legged rabbit, was she allowed to eat.

So there was a bit of an appetite for something other than porridge, stale bread with jam and salty dried strips of fish courtesy of the rivers and bays the Boltons ruled. Once ruled.

Half way down the hall Sansa realised she had forgotten about her hair. Striding back to her chambers she bemoaned to herself that this was why servants were needed. Getting a lady ready for the day was a strenuous task. Undoing her already lose braid, she took the comb to it with a vengeance and started to hum a tune her mother used to sing.

It was about when she was half way through her knots did she realised how strange this all was. To wake up in a happy daze, dress in clothes full of old memories and not cry, be carefree enough to skip off to the kitchens and forget her hair, to think on her time with the Boltons and not shield away.

The joys of murdering a man. To the tune of her humming, she sung under her breath.

_The joys of murdering a man,_

_Oh the joy from the death of that man,_

_Dog food that once was an ugly young man,_

_The joy,_

_Of murdering,_

_A man,_

_Why did mother never tell me,_

_How much fun there was to be,_

_In the act of mur-der-eeerr-iing_

It needed work, Sansa decided, as she rebraided her hair back simply. It was probably lopsided due to her doing it all on her own, arms bended back awkwardly trying to wrestling the long locks all together.

Days later, the bliss from Ramsey’s brutal death had gone. Every day was an extra slab of stone on her shoulders. Worry and responsibility. The Free Folks tales of the Others, the King in the North, Baeliash and his stares.

She had watched them take Ramsey’s body from the kennels, nothing but a hunk of chewed up, faceless meat. Fingersless too, dickless as well. The men seemed horrified by it. They threw his body onto the bonfires that burned out on the battle field, and she watched him turn to ash.

She didn’t think about the dogs till now. Till she descended the steps into the kitchens and walked along the long work tables filled with bread dough being kneeded by the few bakers they had. A scruffy man stood with his back turned to her, unaware of her presence. As he paused to douse more flour onto his workspace, he gossiped with his neighbouring baker.

“The soldiers are having trouble with the kennels,” the thin man muttered, catching her interest and making her pause. “The Bolton dogs been baying and barking every minute of the night. Soldiers camping nearby can’t sleep, the horses are restless. Even the King’s wolf has grow tired, he pacing and growling at ‘em.”

His companion grunted in acknowledgement and paused to wipe his nose.

“Aye, none of that in the dough now. A good baker wipes his hands on his apron,” his companion, someone who was obviously not a trained baker, nodded and wiped his floury hands on the kitchen towel wrapped around his waist. The two settled back into a steady rhythm as they went back to kneading.

Sansa quietly moved away, going through the kitchen for something she could snatch. Taking two warm buns from near the ovens, she pottered around for some chutney or butter to spread on them. A lot of the food had already been hauled down to the camps and infirmary.

“None stupid enough to get in there and quiet them, put them back in their cages ya know. Not after what they did to their master. You know the saying, once a dog turns on its master... no use keeping  it anymore.”

His companion hummed and asked a question.

“How did they get the bastard’s body out?”

“Hooked em and dragged him right up to the door, then threw a rotten piece of meat down one end and quickly pulled him through. Aye those boys had been sweating buckets I heard. Shields up and swords drawn.” The two men chuckled.

“Better off killing ‘em.”

“Aye that’s what the soldiers want. The kennelmaster wants them dead. He’s got new dogs waiting to be put in there.”

Sansa grabbed a bucket which contained meat off-cuts discarded by the cooks and packed in with snow from outside to stop the smell, then marching off towards the kennels.

No new snow had fallen since the battle, making the courtyard a slushy, muddy mess. Frost from the night was in the process of melting, dripping off the roofs and railings of the castle. Soldiers laboured all around, trading in their swords for axes and shovels. Finely bred war horses were hitched to wagons and pulling in wood from the Wolfswood some miles west. Sansa was happy to see the wood, some of it would go towards fires for the camps, others towards fortifying defensive measures. They would need a good stock pile of firewood to get the army through the winter. The castle had heated walls and floors, but not enough of it was repaired to allow near four thousand men to sleep inside. The Boltons had spared no expense in repairing the castle, but time allowed them only the castle proper, the servant’s quarters, the store rooms, and the stables. So many solars, chambers, wings and towers stayed charred and filled with snow.

She reached the kennels which were quiet and hung in shadows. No one was around – this part of the castle wasn’t in need of repair.

Sansa walked right up to the gate and peered in. Their black and brown hides were hard to see in the darkness of the kennel. They were right down the back, huddled together for warmth.

“Doggies,” she whistled. Instantly they stirred. Sansa counted them – something she had never bothered to do before. One, two… three, four, five. “I’ve got breakfast.”

She stuck her hand through the bars and dropped a few grisly meat slices onto the floor, then quickly brought her hand back. Sansa crouched down and watched silently as they approached the gate.

There was the big black one, with his cut ears and scarred hide. Two silver ones, one completely grey while the other had a crystal white chest and belly. A tan one and a dark brown.

Black, silver, silver-white, pinewood and oak. That would be their names for now.

Silver-white was the first to come up and sniff at the frozen meat. Sansa wonder what it smelt like. Like ice, or meat, or the scents of the kitchen? Eventually it licked up a slice and scoffed it down.

Was it good to give dogs living out in a cold kennel cold meat? Lady’s meat was never frozen. Her meals were always the parts left unused by the butcher. Hooves with the tendons still attached and bloody, pig ears and tough hides.

Sansa stood up and grabbed another handful. She put her hands through the bars way up high – too high for the dogs to get unless they jumped for it, and dropped the meat.

Silver-white, pinewood and black were eating eagerly. Oak and silver still held back, nervous to approach. Sansa threw a bit of meat their way. Even then, with the food landing about their paws, they were still cautious to eat.

The black one looked up to her, and their eyes met. He stepped over the meat and came closer, right up to the bars, sticking his nose in-between them and sniffing noisily at her. A part of her knew it was stupid to put her hand up to his snout, but another part remembered that this dog was the most loyal to her the night they ate Ramsey. She could feel it now, even, the way this dog’s mind bended under her will. It shocked her.

She could feel its emotions. Its pain and how cold it was. The broken bone in its leg that had never been set right and healed wrong – the fear of the other dogs it was trapped with. Sansa pulled her glove off, put her hand up, and let it sniff and lick at her palm. She was tense and ready to snatch away the second it looked ready to bite, but that never happened.

Sansa felt delusional. Mentally connecting with dogs? She felt like turning herself into the maesters, but at the same time, the Targaryen’s could connect with their dragons – could they not? And wasn’t this feeling familiar, this pressing of minds together? Didn’t she used to feel like this with Lady, like she could just _think_ an order and the wolf would understand?

She left the kennels in a state of shock.

Sansa sat in front of the fire, watching the flames spit and gutter. She ought to feed it more wood.

Why waste precious wood on one room, housing only one person? She looked around the emptiness of her room and remember how cold the hounds were in their kennel.

The thought was absent minded, but as the seconds went by and the flames died, her fists clenched in determination.

Spring blue eyes snapped to the stack of wood - too rotten for use in the reconstruction - that was packed neatly beside the fireplace. Shrugging her furs tighter, Sansa remember she had never feed a fire. Little daughters were scolded whenever they tried to reach out for the flames, King’s Landing burned no fires and the Eyrie had servants scuttling about every room. The chopped wood was lined with splinters as she picked it up and marched over beside the fire without pause. Before it could dissolve completely into ash and red coals, she dropped the wood. It landed with a plunk and sent embers flying up into the air and drafts. Forcing her to take a large step back, trying to protect her skirts from getting dirty.

Hovering and praying that this small task didn’t turn into a disastrous failure as well, Sansa chuckled dryly when she realised how anxious she was. It was pitiful. The wood had yet to catch fire, and she recalled with dread that dropping a log onto a weak fire often suffocate it all together. Squeezing her hands together, she crouched down to watch as the flames died and the new wood sat perfectly untouched in the ashy pit. The Lady of Winterfell remained crouched in the now pitch black room, perfectly motionless.

Maybe next time, she will place it in there gently. She glared at her hands and sighed. The sun was setting outside and with it the icy winds started to scratch against her windows.

A perfect time for a stroll, she decided. In an effort to take her mind off the innocent fire she had just murdered, Sansa started to hum a tune and walks briskly down the hall.

How would one go about keeping untrustworthy dogs in their rooms?

The heels of her boots clinked against the ancient grey stone, making her steps echo through her castle. Once upon a time she used to resent this place, old and cold, dreary and ugly.

Now she walked them with a vow to stay. They will need to prise her dead from Winterfell, there is no other way she would go.

She was older now, colder, sadder and uglier. Scarred from Joffrey’s knights and Ramsey’s raping, with a frozen stabbing glare no minstrel would dare simper poems about, and her Septa would no doubt have screeched at her for. But that mattered no longer. She was not a powerful Lord’s daughter or a Prince’s betrothed. She was _the_ Lady of Winterfell, not Lord to speak of.

Sansa pushed the heavy wooden door open with a grunt, scowling as the cold hit her face, making her skin bloom pink within an instant. The frigid wind tasted fresh on her lips and she relished the feel of the winter night while storming across the courtyard. This was the first winter she had ever known, yet it felt familiar. It was on the eve of winter that her and Jon’s armies reclaimed Winterfell. It was in winter that the wolves could hunt, free to roam as the lions and stags holed away in their dens.

Quietly she returned to the kennels and stood there, watching them.

What had the soldiers been going on about, being unable to sleep? The dogs hardly made a sound.

It was Black who cared enough to entangle himself from the warmth of their sleeping pile and make his way to the bars.

When faced with the possibility of mastering five hounds, the notion of taking only one to her rooms tonight seemed perfectly sensible and achievable.

Sansa knew where the kennel-masters shed sat, a wooden shelter tucked down the side of the imposing stone kennels. The door was unlocked but ice had formed across the wood slats over the weeks of disuse. She had to grip the ring which acted as a handle and yank with all her might before it snapped open.

Inside was an assortment of gear and cloth, and she noticed, even boxes built to contain dogs so they could ride securely on wagons.

That might be useful if she had the strength to take it to her rooms. Sansa attempted picking it up.

Tomorrow she might ask a pair of men to move it, she decided.

In the draws of a tall cupboard she found a muzzle which looked the right size and a leash to attach to the muzzle. She went back out and found Black was still waiting pressed against the bars for her.

“You are a good dog,” she informed the beast. It continued to watch her, looked sad and uneasy. “Would you let me muzzle you?” She held up the muzzle and presented the creation to the dog.

It sniffed at the offering and did not seem terribly alarmed.

Sansa then began the delicate process of figuring out how to attach a muzzle to a dog she feared would snap her wrist bones in half at any moment.

Black was fine until she slipped the snout part over its broad nose. It flung its head side to side and she felt its panic run up her arm like static shock.

_I will be defenceless in here, with them._

She felt so sorry, and felt its fear so clearly, she did not even think before throwing the gate open and letting it into the yard with her.

The four other dogs stirred at the sound of the iron gate moving, and started trotting up towards her. Sansa flung the gate closed and latched it in terror.

She stared as the beasts peeled out of the dark and into the weak light of the winter dusk, their eyes glowing and jaws open with interested. Gods they were terrifying.

Then she remember she had just let the largest of them out.

Sansa turned slowly and looked about the small yard, but couldn’t see the Black anywhere. Then she felt her skirts be pulled, and she looked down to her feet to see it looking back up at her, stepping on the edges of her dress it was so close.

The muzzle still hung half off it’s head, and Sansa worked as quickly as she could in a hidden panic to buckle the muzzle before it realised it was free, or before someone else saw she had let it free.

It accepted the muzzle easily now, and Sansa paused to thank the Gods Ramsey had never been so… to muzzle them when punishing them.

She feels a happiness come from the hound at the feel of the muzzle, and she senses its knowledge that muzzles meant people were less afraid of them, that masters only let him out of his cage when he is muzzled.

A muzzle was freedom to this dog. Sansa resisted the urge to drawn Black into her arms. Instead, she clicked the leash onto the muzzle and stood up.

“Follow me my love,” and it did, even though she could not imagine a time anyone had ever lead this hulking monster around on something as simple as a leash. All she could see was cages in its mind. Caged on wagons then let loose in woods, then caged again, pitted in cages to fight to the death for the screaming men, sitting for days on end in cages unfed. Loneliness and fear.

Sansa walked slowly and softly down the unused corridors of the castle, gently guiding it up the stairs which it had to learn to step up, then finally into her warm rooms.

It looks around frightened once she closed the door, and slunk as close to the walls as possible. She dropped the leash and let it do as it pleased.

Sansa draw a fur off her bed and spread it out by the fire, she then took a brush and sat down in front of the fire in the chair, the fur at her feet.

The fire crackled for a time and all anyone did was either hum and brush their own hair or huddle in the corner, making themselves as small as possible.

The dog did not care how warm it was before the fire, the corner was already as warm as a summers day compared to the kennels. Sansa so desperately wanted to brush its black coat, but knew today was not the day for that. Tomorrow would not even be the time for that, likely.

She felt like she sat in the chair all night, but it was still dark when she finally went to bed, so it could not have been all night. In the morning she woke up and looked around as quietly as possible, hoping to see the dog in an unguarded moment.

She could not find it anywhere.

Very carefully, she lowered her head and peered under the bed.

It slept curled up directly under where she slept, so soft and gentle looking in sleep she could almost forget what things she had seen it do.

“Good morning,” she whispered, too quiet to wake it up. It felt so good to wish someone that.

Sansa decided to go about her morning routine as normally as possible, so she stirred from her bed and went to her basket, picking out her outfit for the day like any another. As she dressed she kept peeking at the bed, and she could see its curious dark face peeking back.

“We must go and break out fast,” she told it, reminiscent of how she used to narrate her every thought to Lady.

Once her hair was done Sansa stood by the door and looked to it expectantly.

“Come along then, my love,” she said, and patted at her thigh. It drew out like it was walking through molasses, leash trailing between its legs across the stone floor.

It reached her side and sat, sniffing at her new skirts in curiosity.

“I shall need to decide on a name for you,” she told it, before taking the leash and heading on down to the butchers. She will see the dog fed before her, if only because the butcher would not be up in time to ask what she was doing with the dog.

Standing in the butchers Sansa realised a flaw in the plan. The dog could not eat with the muzzle on, but she wanted to feed it without the others dog present.

Then she remember the travel cages.

She put it inside one, unbuckled the muzzle, and fed it the particular rope of intestine it had been eyeing in the butchers rank waste room.

Sansa knelt and watched it eat, hunched over and fast like it was not used to meals big enough to fill its stomach whole. For the first time she paused to notice Black was a male.

He was a dutiful beast.

“Solider,” she said, and it felt right.

The next dog was Pinewood. This happened because the dark brown hound had been the one to come to the gates the next time she stood at them. It almost felt like they were telling her when they were ready.

Pinewood adjusted better, maybe because he seemed so young, nearly still a puppy, but also likely because of Solider.

When she brought Pinewood to her room the first time, Solider was already there laying in his usually spot on the fur before the fire, his legs all spread out and head resting on one arm.

Solider jolted to his feet when he saw Pinewood, which was terrible and panicked Pinewood. Sansa stepped between them and draw Soldier’s eye away from the puppy and up to her own.

“He is your pack now,” she instructed. Solider grumbled but relented and lay back down.

Pinewood did not hunker and hide like Solider had, instead he stay as close to Sansa as he could, always among her skirts. When she sat in her chair he sat at her feet, looking up at her.

Solider had never gotten used to being touched, no matter how carefully she did it, but Pinewood looked far more promising.

Sansa fetched her brush and knelt down by the fire with the new hound. He sat with her. She let him smell the brush then gently grew it across a foot, then his back, then his shoulder, then his head.

Pinewood closed his eyes in delight.

“You are incredibly handsome, and good,” she told him.

Again she spent nearly all night sitting by the fire, brushing Pinewood from nose to tail.

“Oh, you are so sweet,” she told the dog. She wondered if Ramsey had not had this one long enough to ruin it.

Sweetie the beastly hound became.

The third one was louder and whined whenever slightly upset. She was glad her rooms were so isolated. Jon slept in a tent among the army, and Baelish stayed in the guest wings on the other side of the castle. Other than that there was no one but servants who had need to enter this part of the wing, and there were no servants to spare on one ladies chamber.

Sansa opened up the rooms either side of her own and let the dogs explore those too. Solider and Sweetie were both now free to wonder without muzzle or leash, and enjoyed trailing her and exploring the empty parts of the castle.

The whining one, still unnamed beside White, preferred to be left alone.

Sansa eventually reaching a peaceful arrangement when she gave it it’s own corner in the room next door. It liked having its own space rather than sleeping under the bed with the other two.

It was a shame there was already a Ghost, it would have suited that name well.

There were other white things she could name it after, snow, ice, frost, flowers, owls, but Whinger was what stuck in the end for a lack of anything better.

On the introduction of the fourth dog, White-Silver, Sansa realised what was going on. Whinger came alive in the presence of White-Silver. They must be litter mates, brothers, they must have rarely been separate their whole lives.

Now she was back to having all her dogs sleeping under the bed, Whinger and White-Silver inseparable.

And so Whinger became Crescent and White-Silver became Gibbious, two halves of the same moon.

The last was Oak. The only female dog in the pack. Sansa was surprised there was a female among them at all, it did not seem like Ramsey’s way.

But Oak was an intimating creature, and her eyes gleamed more dangerously than all the others. A bit like Arya, Sansa decided.

She kept Oak on the muzzle for longer than any of the others had, and only took it off her in the end because she knew Solider, if not all the other dogs, would protect her if Oak ever turned.

Oak's stomach didn’t hang low with past litters. Sansa wonder how that was given she was housed constantly with the males.

Crone, she decided.

Solider, Sweetie, Crescent, Gibbious, Crone, all their names different enough they would not get confused who she was calling once she started to teach them to come.

It took exactly ten days to shift the entire pack from the kennels to her rooms. She walked them the hidden way into the Godswood every morning and evening, feeling them there under the trees and watching them run about the snow piles as she sat before the Weirwood and stared at the pool or thermal water her family so loved to reflect by.

Jon brought the dogs up on the thirteenth day.

“People are saying you go around with Ramsey’s dogs,” he said while they sat in the hall preparing to hear reports from their sworn lords.

“I go around with my own dogs,” she snapped back, and thankfully he dropped it and never brought it up again. It was unexpected he didn’t push the issue, it gave her pause. She stared at him out of the corner of her eye for the rest of the occasion, solemn and tired in his dark furs.

“Where do you keep them?” He asked a few days later then they happened to both be present for dinner at the same time. Sansa didn’t want to say ‘my rooms’ so she said ‘the empty room next to mine’.

Jon almost smiled then.

“I would say they weren’t worth the food to feed them but… they are performing an important task,” Gods was he always so sparing with worlds as a boy? She could not remember him being so particularly cryptic when they were children.

“Which is?” She brought a spoonful of hot soup to her lips.

“Guarding you.”

Sansa thought that over, finishing the last of her soup, then nudged him lightly with her elbow to get his attention.

“My own little guard,” she smiled.

His face was its normal worried expression for a few heartbeats, then all of a sudden it spread into a grin wider than any she had seen since rushing into his arms at Castle Black.

Her guard survived the long winter with her and made sure she survived alongside them, even killing a white walker which had been raised inside the castle.

They were there to run about her horse’s feet as she rode out to see the first green of spring rise up through the dirt.

They were there to sit underneath the high table, clearly visible to any visitor, as she assumed her duties as Warden of the North with not war, but peace, to preside over.

Some nights when she felt broken and dirty, she would sit on the floor among them in her rooms and draw them to her.

She loved them terribly. They were gentle, and beautiful, and so wholly pure and perfect.

And if they were such things, then so was she.

She divided the Bolton lands among the Wildlings who fought for the Starks, though not too many of them were interested in staying in one place or taking up the farming trade.

The forests, which had been chopped down in favour of sheep grazing fields, reclaimed the hills and feilds, spreading out from the few steep valleys they had been left alone in.

Sansa visited the former Bolton lands for the first time when she is four-and-three. The forests were beautiful.

The land grew into something so gentle, and so wholly pure and perfect.

The Wildwood they called it, the large expanse of forest that extends from the Narrow Sea all the way into the middle of the North. It shelters enough game for the smallfolk - so changed after surviving the whites and accepting the Wildlings - to never watch their children starve again.

If there were to be invaded, the smallfolk openly talk about running into the Wildwood and disappearing into the quiet depths where it almost feels like no person has ever been before. 

It is strange to think that of all Eddard Stark’s children it is Sansa Stark who follows in his path so truly, the Warden of the North until her dying day.

Sansa Stark, the subject of a hundred songs, hardly any of them about love or flowers.


End file.
